Traditional television is supported in large part through provision of advertisements. Advertising may be inserted into television channels by a variety of entities including content providers, local affiliates, pay TV network operators, and so on.
Content deals between content providers and pay television network operators, for instance, typically include the rights for the operator to insert advertisements at predetermined times. These advertisements have typically been inserted on a per-market basis (since pay television operators have historically operated as a per-market business). These advertising opportunities are called “avails,” and the ones that are inserted on a per-market basis are generally referred to as “local avails.”
Non-broadcast-oriented television distribution systems (e.g. those that distribute content over packet-switched IP networks), however, have characteristics that differ from those of traditional television network. For example, non-broadcast-oriented television distribution systems typically encrypt the content at the source before distributing the content over the network, e.g., to prevent content theft.
Non-broadcast-oriented television distribution systems (e.g., IP-based distribution networks) are also different from traditional broadcast-oriented television distribution systems in that clients on packet-switched networks have equal access to each content stream. Broadcast and cable distribution, however, use physical bottlenecks (e.g. geography or cable topography) to limit client access to only those content streams that are geographically relevant. Thus, some techniques that are used to solve encryption and content distribution in a traditional television content distribution system are not applicable in an IP-based distribution system